Traditionally electronics engineers and printed circuit board (PCB) designers (“engineers”) have manually created CAD models for electronic components used in their designs. These CAD models include PCB footprints (or land patterns), schematic symbols, 3D models, simulation models, or any permutation thereof. This is a time-consuming process that results in duplicated effort across the industry. However, as the Internet plays a greater role in the electronic design process, engineers are increasingly relying on online sources to find readily available CAD models to download and use within their designs. These online sources include component manufacturer and distributor websites, Google searches, hardware design forums, cloud-based design tools that crowd sourced CAD models, online CAD libraries, and others. This shift in how engineers are sourcing CAD models is producing new challenges. Specifically, since CAD models can be sourced virtually from anywhere online, there is no way for engineers to gauge the quality or limitations of the CAD models they are sourcing without manually studying them. The CAD models they find online are essentially “black boxes” that provide little to no transparency into the standards they follow, their self-consistency with the physical component dimensions or other component characteristics, or their technical limitations.
CAD models are often created manually, which involves intricate, and therefore error-prone, work so there is a probability that engineers will source inaccurate models, or models that are insufficient for their applications. If inaccurate or insufficient CAD models are used in a design it can result in costly prototype iterations and delays that may result in manufacturability issues or more serious product failures.
To prevent these issues, existing processes require users to manually verify CAD models against multiple sources, such as datasheets or manufacturer's packaging specifications, in order to determine the validity of CAD models. This is a time-consuming process that nearly defeats the benefits of sourcing third party data in the first place. As a result, there is an urgent need for an automated system to assess the quality and limitations of CAD models.